To my dearest Maddi moos,
There are many lessons that you’ll never see coming, that’ll shake you to the very core, that will pick your mind to pieces. There are many lessons that will indefinitely shatter your heart into disrepair. Just stay calm for now my love, I’m writing to confide in you the deepest depths of what’s yet to come.
You must be sitting in the living room in front of a roaring fire grandad had made just for you, playing with your figures or singing Cher on mums’ Singstar or writing about your primary school boyfriends through your little songs in your little love-heart scattered notebook. I know at the moment you’re probably seeing things through your wide hazel eyes and a layer of rose-tinted glasses, and that’s okay for now. Hold that sense of innocence and naivety for as long as you can within your chubby, minute hands, it’s impossible to regain your sense of abandon and frivolous trust in people once you’ve lost it. You will lose this innocence, unfortunately, not in the nicest ways is trust unlearned but you’ll be okay in the end, and if you’re not okay, it’s not the end.
While I don’t know at what point into the past this would reach you, I would just like you to know above a lot of things, whilst you still have the opportunity to see Nana and Pops, do it. And make the greatest effort of cherishing them, and if by chance one day you happen to be walking past a familiar house and see a familiar face putting the bins out with wispy auburn hair, don’t listen to mum when she tells you not to stand there and gawk. Gawk, stare, gaze at that deja vu inducing face. Embrace that woman until you realise that the stranger mum told you not to linger in front of was your Nana, who you won’t see until it’s too late to unsee her sunken face and too late to tell her that you’re sorry for following suit of your parents and too late to make up for lost time before you lose her. Let Nana hug you with her abominably love-laden strength, don’t you dare moan about having to sleep on the floor of her tiny loft, don’t you dare moan about the lipstick residue left atop of your cheeks, don’t you dare waste your breath moaning about nor to the very people you would love to give that little bit of breath to when they’re gone- just for one last conversation, one last ‘nunight’ or ‘I Love you’. There’ll come a time when you’ll long for nothing more than to be wrapped up beneath Nana’s knitted blankets or sitting next to pops’ chair whilst he eats his tinned hard candy fruit sweets, asking for one and then one more. You’ll come to realise all too late and yet all too soon in life that you’ll pine and you’ll weep for all the little things that you’ve missed whilst being too busy in your own world, of the loved ones around you. P.s even the strongest people won’t live forever, despite what you may think.
I know you’re probably finding this a slight hard to swallow, my dear, but if I could’ve read this a lot sooner than I am, sitting here writing it; I would not have as many regrets nor such a guilt scattered conscience as I do now. I want you to know that people whom you love with all of your littlest biggest heart and people, who you may think love you and maybe do in fact love you, will leave without a goodbye, without so much as an explanation to your eventual tear soaked pillows. I would just like you to know and keep this in mind, that, no matter the length of time a loved one has been gone without reason, it’ll always be a constant state of feeling like something is innately missing from somewhere inside of you, and that’s okay, so long as you do not blame yourself for someone else’s willful absence. Understand that the hardest goodbyes are the ones left unsaid, regardless of how many people leave you one after the other, it will not get easier to suppress the primal need for them to still be there when you get home or be a phone call away, it will be, however, easier to lift the burden of self-blame when you have the people you so love to warm you up to not getting too attached.
My little Moos, please, please and please again, do not lose that little spark of a flame you have in your mind and your heart to do what you so want to do. Never expect failure or doubt yourself even before you have validation or reason to do so. Write, sing, play make-believe; do everything and anything you seek to occupy your ever-expanding imagination, before the people you love and the mangled regiment of education wears your brain to an ever-fading semblance of what used to be a beautiful, burning mind. Do not let anyone, and I emphasise; ANYONE- not even the people you’d take a bullet for nor the people who you put your blind trust into, shape the way your mind melts and peaks and bounces about the tightening walls of your cranium. Please, don’t let yourself become subject to be bullied out of any passion of yours because when the bully’s gone- you’re left at square one, a heap of flesh and bones and a lost mind drooping over a chair in the corner, wondering how someone you held so dear to your chest could break your heart and the head that follows.
Anyway, I guess what I’m trying to say is, hold onto naievety and your child-like curiosity, stick to your guns, have trust and have hope in yourself. If anyone should leave, through willingness or death, do not blame yourself because their time isn’t spent with you any longer, just know that everything happens for a reason to lend to you, wisdom, and to thicken your skin for further growth. And if they left through choice, just know that you’re not on their mind half as much as they haunt yours. Don’t bottle your feelings up or refuse to talk through sheer stubbornness and pride- speak, shout, scream your anger or your sadness or your happiness from the tops of your young lungs and try to maintain your heart on your little sleeves for the longest of times. If you don’t talk, if you don’t seek help in someone, anyone, your nights will be hell and there will be no one there to lull you into sweet slumber, only yourself to cry your body to sleep and the television to muffle your mind. And finally, just be a child, disregard anyone who tells you to grow up before your time, revel in your childishness manner and above all and everything do what makes YOU happy and never stop laughing, okay?
Love you all the moon and all the stars, sincerely, your seventeen year old self.
